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HDTV upgrade

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Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2005-10-04          117350

Does anyone else have HDTV running off a Directv satelite box? I'm scheduled to upgrade on Friday and am looking for any advice or problems to watch for.

They are making me have it "professionally" installed. I installed my original equipment and fixed my dad's setup. So I expect I may have an interesting time with the installer. Especially if the installer was anything like the phone person I talked too. That guy didn't know anything and was arguing with me over what kind of tv I had and what I needed. Geez!


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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2005-10-04          117358

I will be interested to know what happens. The last unit I bought and installed was to be HDTV ready, all I needed to do was change receivers. I have installed about 4 or 5 unit all together. I was suprised to here that they wanted an installer to do it. ....

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DennisCTB
Join Date: Nov 1998
Posts: 2707 NorthWest NJ
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2005-10-04          117360

I heard that Directv is coming out with "Home Media Center" by the end of the year. This will be their Tivo replacement.

This system is supposed to work off your home Computer Network. Making it unnecessary to have dual coax running to each location. Using the network each TV on your system will be Tivo capable from a central box.

I have a one year old Tivo from Directv, and I am going to wait on the HD (don't have a HD TV yet is one reason) as I would like to have the Tivo on all the sets(3).

Dennis ....

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Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2005-10-05          117420

Dennis, I looked at the TIVO option they have as that would give me HDTV and TIVO. But their discount for me was still way out of my price range. As I'm a long term customer, they dropped their upgrade price on the HDTV receiver and dish. But only after I emailed them to remind them I could get a significantly better deal by switching to their competitor.

I'd love the TIVO, but it's just too expensive for me to get past the boss. I'm surprised I got the HD upgrade slid past. I've had the TV for 2 years, but have needed the receiver to get the HDTV signals. But using the DVD on an HD unit is awesome!

I figure I can wait for the price of the DVR's to come down before I go that route. It will probably take 2-3 years. By then my kid will be old enough to be in control of our lives so TIVO/DVR may be my only option to catch my programming. ....

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DennisCTB
Join Date: Nov 1998
Posts: 2707 NorthWest NJ
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2005-10-05          117424

I contacted Directv last year and asked to speak to their customer retention group. They gave me one Tivo receiver and two new receivers for $99 total including installation of the dual Lmb for the dish. I just had to keep it for a year to work off the promotion.

Tivo is awesome, once you have it, you would defintely keep it, and say wow haow did I live without that gadget ;-) ....

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MiikeJD
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 25 Southern Illinois
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2005-10-05          117450

Dennis I have hdtv on one tv. I know I had to have 3 LNB's on my dish to make it work. I went to Best Buy and bought the receiver. The local dish supplier wouldn't provide and they didn't have any for sale.
I put the new receiver online but the HDTV wouldn't work. The dish supplier sent me a kid to fix it. He couldn't get it to work and told me the receiver was bad. He kept calling the provider and telling them to re send the signal in HDTV. Come to find out he didn't have the coax run correctly. The coax from the LNB's on the dish has to come from an internal switch out there and from there go straight to the receiver. If you want me to look tomorrow I will send you a correct set of directions on how they finally got it right.
If you need me to help you, you could send me your phone number and I could call you if it would help. I had 3 different dish people here before they figured out what they were doing wrong. ....

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Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2005-10-06          117473

Well, it should be an interesting experience then when the installer shows up tomorrow. So there needs to be 3 lines run from the new dish to the single receiver? Whew!

Usually when there is a problem, it's because things are wired up wrong. My dad wasn't happy with his satelite picture. He tolerated the poor quality. Then I visited and the next morning I saw the picture myself. He had a box of cables. I made him go get it. 5 minutes later I had things re-wired and he was estactic at the improvement.

I hope it goes smoothly. Years of troubleshooting could get me into conflicts with the installer if it doesn't go well at first. Especially if they send a kid. Kind of hard to take them seriously when I was building computers before they were born. ....

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kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
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2005-10-06          117476

When we built our house I jammed 18k feet of RG-6 and Cat5 cable into it. Even then I came up one RG-6 short on the satellite dish. Fortunately I ran some empty conduit from the basement to attic to allow easy pulling in of another cable after the fact. After seeing some of the hack jobs installers do to get cable from point A to point B my advice is to run the cable yourself. ....

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Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2005-10-07          117518

So far so good. The local channels are up and running. One station that didn't come in so good with the analog signal is now really nice with the digital signal. I don't need to run extra cables either. But I'm only running one box so I don't need many. We have chosen to keep the number of TV's in the house down.

Installer had a bad LNB from a earlier job and forgot to pick another up. So he had to run back to his shop to pick one up before we can get the dish portion installed and running. ....

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Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2005-10-07          117526

Ok, install went quick and easy. Man that picture totally rocks!! Discovery HD is awesome!! This so rocks!! ....

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DennisCTB
Join Date: Nov 1998
Posts: 2707 NorthWest NJ
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2005-10-07          117527

Iowafun,

What kind of set do you have? Did you go plasma, LCD, DLP? How wide?

I have to get one of those someday. My predicament is that my wife has the fancy armoire in the Family room that kinda cramps the widescreen thing as the most I could get in there is baout 35 inches. I am not allowed to stick one of those things out in the open, no go.

Now I have a nice size playroom over the garages that would be a good candidate but the kids still ar kind of rough on stuff and might throw something into those rather delicate screens, plus my Tivo is in the family room.

What a dilimma ;-)! ....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2005-10-07          117533

OK Iowafun we need more details. I take it you only need one line from the box to the TV. I thought that HDTV needed 2? I have 4 from the disk to the box and then 1 run over the house. Like Ken I have run the coax and cat 5 cable around the house. Each room has 1 box with phone cable and cat 5. The idea of having to run a second line don't give me warm and fuzzies.
I have a media/tornado shelter in the basement which is still unfinished. It has no windows so I was going to buy a LCD or DLDP projector. Naturally I finally got the pot lights wired into it yesterday and moved the table saw in. It will be a while. ....

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DennisCTB
Join Date: Nov 1998
Posts: 2707 NorthWest NJ
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2005-10-07          117538

I can see we are not going to get an answer from IowaFun as his setup is so great that he will be sitting in front of it mesmerized for some time to come. Anyone have his cell number so we can coach him back in front of his PC?

Ahhh the sweet joy of newly found toys!

....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2005-10-07          117540

Is it live or is it HDTV. ....

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DennisCTB
Join Date: Nov 1998
Posts: 2707 NorthWest NJ
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2005-10-07          117541

My brother just got a new HP Home Media Center PC. He had lots of questions until he bought it. Now I don't expect to hear from him as gets embroiled in all its media details. Amazing what you can get for 900 bucks

3.4 gHz Pentium 4
1GB memory
250 GB of disk
19" lcd monitor
wireless mouse and keyboard ....

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Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2005-10-09          117624

Sorry guys, I don't normally go online on Saturdays. Yes, I was watching TV in HD. But I also did some mowing tri work before the snow flies. I also moved the old tractor into it's winter storage spot and then bladed the driveway to smooth out some of the potholes. So I have some valid reasons. It felt good to be on the tractor again. I haven't been on it in like 4-5 weeks since the grass really hasn't grown and I've been sick.

Here's the scoup on my HDTV experience: The previous owner of my house had run 2 coax cables from the satellite dish location into the house. 1 routed to the basement family room and 1 to the upstairs living room. We won't go into the quality of the routing. We have consiously chosen to not have a tv in the living room. So that leaves the basement family room as the primary TV watching area. We do have a small unit in the kitchen for local news in the morning and an ancient (30 years?) unit in my woodshop.

So there is currently no value for us in running more than 1 satellite receiver as extras cost extra and liited usage wouldn't make it worthwhile. TV is a 65" projection Hitachi widescreen HD unit. I got that 2 years ago as an anniversary present (I still don't know how I pulled that one off). It's big, but awesome picture and we have the room for it. The couch is over 15 feet away from it. The TV lacked the iternal HD tuner as that jumped the price up a lot of money. We knew it was awesome with the DVD player.

I've been a customer of DirecTv for over 5 years. So I emailed and they called me back and gave me discount on the HD receiver (H10 unit). I inquired about the HDTivo receiver, but they still wanted $399 for that with the good customer discount - no deal.

Install was a snap. Used the existing Coax cable from the dish to the receiver as the input. My regular local channels previously came off a roof mounted antenae as I live 40 miles from the stations in the country. But the antennae is new enough that it had good VHF capability and worked fine for picking up the local HD TV broadcast signals with the new receiver. Connection to the TV was done using the 3 color cable connections to the TV back. I don't have the latest single cable connection (HDMI?) on the TV. So total receiver hardware install time was a matter of minutes.

The dish install went fine, but DirecTV sent an installer. He knew what he was doing as pointing the oval HD dish is definitely more tricky than the old oval system. Requires the angle and the dish itself is rotated on it's axis. So that took 10 minutes due to his experience.

So overall, I'd say it went simple and smooth. The local channels have a better picture now than with the old analog signal for the non-HD programing. The HD stuff is broadcast in 16:9 so it fills the whole screen which is really nice. The picture is awesome and DVD quality. I watched the Ghost Wisperer on friday night and I knew Jennifer Love Hewitt was hot. But in HD, damm!!

It's hard to describe, but now the TV is truely living up to it's full capability that I could only previously get by watching a DVD. Football is awesome to watch in HD. Auto racing is better. Such a clear picture. I also piped the sound through the stereo so sound is better. Gardening and nature programs broadcast in HD are awesome for their color, detail and intense images. Discovery HD is awesome for demonstrating it's capabilities.

With the setup I've got, I can run up to 4 seperate receivers, but only 2 wires are run now. I'd have to run more wires to run a 3rd or 4th box. That won't be for years as the kid is only 5 months old. So who knows what technology will be around then.

One thing to remember is the new HD tsuff is all digital. So the output is digital. So previously I had the kitchen tv setup so I could watch satellite in Channel 3 so I wouldn't miss anything in a race or to monitor what my sis-in-law was watching. That's no longer an option unless I route a differet wiring and buy a new TV.

One word of additional warning. Football in HD is awesome for the detail and color. But when they zoom in on a umbo sized lineman, the detail is there. It's not pretty. Really not pretty... ....

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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2005-10-09          117648

Thanks Iowa, your fingers must be sore from all the typing but really informative and complete. Thanks again. ....

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